'Portlandia': A sneak peek

Can Fred Armisen succeed at sketch comedy outside of "Saturday Night Live"? He gives it a try, starting tonight in "Portlandia," a half-hour of hipster-hilarious vignettes co-starring Carrie Brownstein, formerly of Sleater-Kinney.

Based on these two clips (see above and below) it just might be worth watching. And I say that as someone who often tries to watch Netflix while texting and Facebooking at the same time (again, see above) and as someone who feels an inexplicable pressure to have read that thing about the National in Paste and that steampunk article on Boing Boing (again, see below).

Is the rest of the country laughing at us (Portland) or with us? To me it doesn’t matter if they are laughing at Portland or not. I think it’s great that SNL personnel are that interested in Portland they would want to make a mini-series about the city. It wasn’t that long ago the NY Times was obsessed about the city and couldn’t quit writing stories about Portland. I grew up in Portland but then ran away and joined the Navy for 30 years and came back. Anyway, I can tell you that Portland is known worldwide. People ask about it being green (both climate and industry), bike friendly, and the only city where a 17 year old can have a Sam Adams (inside Portland joke). There is at least one shop in almost every city around the world I have been to that has the picture of Mayor Bud Clark flashing the naked downtown statue. I think the show was humorous, but not as funny as I thought it would be based on the clips. Come on you - the glass is half empty folks - get a smaller glass and keep Portland weird.